Today, June 28th, Brenda and I are celebrating our 28th wedding anniversary. There’s no trip planned as adventurous as our trip to Belize (photo gallery) three years ago, but we’re heading up to one of our favorite local escapes, Sacramento. We always have a great time in Sacramento, and we’ve decided that if we had to live in a larger city, Sacramento would be near the top of our list. They have great dining, craft beer, shopping and lots of different social and cultural activities. When we go to Sacramento, we can be as busy or as laid back as we want to be.

We usually stay at the Holiday Inn Capitol Plaza. It sits at the head of the Westfield Downtown Plaza Mall, near state capitol, and is just a hundred steps from one of my favorite upscale brew pubs, River City Brewing Company. I like their ales – I just wish they had an IPA. I really do enjoy their Woodenhead Ale and Kolsch, though. Their food is second to none as far a pub food goes. Their wood-fired oven pizzas are fabulous, and they have a wonderful rib eye steak with a huge dollop of blue cheese and crisp onion strings. Mmmm!

Right above River City Brewing Company is Johnny Rockets, easily the best burger chain in America – even better than In-N-Out! Their meals are expensive, but after you have one of their bacon cheeseburgers, half rings – half fries, and a vanilla malt, you’ll pay twice what they ask:) We hit Johnny Rockets at least once every trip for either lunch or dinner.

If you head out of the hotel and go west, instead of going east into the mall area (which has really great shopping opportunities – Brenda can attest to this:), you immediately go into a walking subway that passes under I-5 and drops you directly into Old Sacramento, with more dining and shopping than you can take in in a single day.

We really like this hotel as the rates are pretty good (and we belong to their rewards program – this stay is completely free for us:) and the surrounding amenities are second to none!

Right after we check in to our hotel, we’re going to visit Rubicon Brewing Company for an ale or two and lunch. Their IPA is easily in my top ten IPAs on earth. It is such an easy drinking IPA – very representative of West Coast IPAs without being over the top.

Shhhhh! Zales recently had a special on black diamond earrings, so I got a pair for Brenda as an anniversary gift. I think she’ll like them:)